9/11 BEFORE & AFTER / The deadly game of 'convert or kill'

David Biale

Published
4:00 am PST, Sunday, December 30, 2001

Sept. 11 focused our attention on an unpleasant reality we had previously ignored: There are those in the Islamic world who see their relations with the West as an unrelenting war. Some suggest that this reflects a deviant form of Islam, but others point out that even though many Muslims today do not hold such views, there is a long historical tradition, going back to the beginnings of Islam, that does see the world this way.

For many believing Muslims -- and not just so-called fundamentalists -- the non-Muslim world consists of infidels Muslims must convert or kill.

Islam did develop a theory of tolerance for "peoples of the book" -- Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians -- but only on condition that adherents to these other religions accept second-class status within an Islamic state. As for those outside the "house of Islam," they were to be considered mortal enemies, toward whom one might declare a truce for long periods of time, but never full- fledged acceptance.

The resurgence of these old religious ideas explains not only bin Ladenism, but also the unwillingness of Islamic movements like Hamas to accept the state of Israel.

Beyond the political conflict over a small piece of land in the Middle East lies the theological affront that a non-Muslim state has acquired sovereignty in the traditional sphere of Islam.

Like Christian rule in Lebanon, Jewish statehood in Palestine is unacceptable to many devout Muslims. So, even if an equitable division of land between Israel and a Palestinian state could be agreed upon, there will still be Muslims who insist that Israel be dismantled. This is one more sobering lesson that Sept. 11 forced us to confront.

To be absolutely fair, the Muslim religion is not alone in its unwillingness to tolerate other religions as equals.

Both Christianity and Judaism -- the other two great monotheistic religions -- have historically been intolerant of nonbelievers (although the Jews rarely possessed the political power to enforce it). Before the modern period, Christian states fought long and bloody battles with Muslims, and with each other. And, over the last century, many devout Christians had as much difficulty as Muslims in accepting a sovereign Jewish state.

But as a result of its religious wars, Christianity eventually developed a doctrine of toleration, culminating in the European Enlightenment and, more recently, in the Catholic Church's Vatican II.

Until such developments take place in the Islamic world, the Middle East conflict will never find a permanent, peaceful resolution. But it is a development that must also take place among Jews who cannot abide the idea of a Palestinian state on the lands of the Bible. Both parties to the Middle East conflict need to divest themselves of religious dogmas that only complicate an already impossibly entangled thicket.

Here, Sept. 11 may contain a silver lining.

The United States should follow up the defeat of al Qaeda with the promotion of real modernization and democracy in the Islamic world, something we have assiduously avoided in the past. A Marshall Plan for the Middle East, consisting as much of ideas as of material aid, is necessary to secure military victory. Only then will pluralism and tolerance, which are essential ingredients of democracy, take root there -- for the benefit not only of Israelis and Palestinians, but of all the peoples of the Middle East.